More International Visitors at the Booth Museum

The Booth Museum has had two international visitors this month on very different missions. Both were from North America, and both are studying for their Ph.D.s.

Caitlin Silberman

First we welcomed Caitlin Silberman from California, but studying for her doctorate in Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is in the early stages of writing a dissertation on birds and bird/human hybridity in Victorian British art, visual culture, and material culture. One of her chapters deals with bird taxidermy, and the Booth Museum is of course a prime source for nineteenth-century taxidermy. Caitlin looked at all our archives about Mr. Booth, his diaries, catalogues and paintings, as well of course as his splendid 4-volume publication ‘Rough notes on the birds observed during twenty-five years’ shooting and Collecting in the British Islands, 1881-1887.

Michelle Campbell

Only a week later, we were happy to be able to help Michelle Campbell in her quest for Chalk fossils of some early representatives of marine reptiles. Michelle is studying for her doctorate at the University of Alberta, though she originally comes from Ottawa. She is interested in how land-based reptiles made the leap into becoming fully marine in their habits. Michelle’s supervisor, Prof. Mike Caldwell first visited the Booth Museum in 1995 and discovered our rich collection of 85 million year old fossils which he studied and published on. Michelle is extending those studies.

We take a great deal of pleasure in the knowledge that we are able to help people as diverse as scientists and art historians advance their studies by using the collections in the Booth Museum.

John Cooper, Keeper of Natural Sciences

Friends of Brighton History Centre

Kate Elms and I were relative newcomers to the History Centre, both joining the permanent staff in 2007 – Kate having previously worked there as a volunteer and I having worked elsewhere in Brighton Museum with the Curator responsible for Oral Histories.

Like Paul Jordan, when he first started with the original team under the management of Sally Blann, I remember feeling seriously intimidated by the sheer number of items in our collection and having a real sense of terror at the idea of being left on my own at the staff desk and being expected to answer anyone’s questions.

An early photograph of the reference library

Fortunately, our knowledge and our confidence increased over the years and that has been one of the joys of the job – always learning, always finding out more details and adding to our knowledge and again to our ability to really help the visitors to the Centre. Because it’s not just the beautiful room and the resources within it but it was the people who came that really made the History Centre something special.

A letter published in the 1920s complaining of draughts in the room

Although there have been  the obvious highlights like the media research we did for film and television and radio companies and our moment of glory on Who Do You Think You Are?, it was the visitors to the Centre we met in person who really gave meaning to our work. We had academics and historians, novelists and short story writers, journalists researching for various projects and students from PhD level studying rare books and pamphlets down to primary school children looking for that extra finishing touch for a homework project with an old image or a historic newspaper report. We’ve had sports enthusiasts trawling through the newspapers for match reports from a hundred years ago. We’ve supported and advised people with their family histories either helping to trace living relatives or sometimes unearthing hidden family secrets and tragedies in inquest reports and newspaper stories. I’ll never forget the woman who came from Brazil knowing that her grandmother had been in England at the beginning of the 20^th century but not knowing where, being moved to tears when we found her name in the recently released 1911 census, hidden away in a boarding school so far from home.

Paul, Shona & Kate

We’d like to thank all the people who came and who we were able to help and who gave us a real sense that our work was worthwhile and appreciated. Although it was wonderful to see our names mentioned in credits in books, for example, we also feel very proud that for some people the History Centre was just a place that they liked to come – to the full time carers getting an hour away from their responsibilities, for the people looking for a peaceful spot in a busy city. It’s been a privilege to meet you. So many of you have been true friends of the History Centre.

Shona Milton, Brighton History Centre

The Booth Museum Stars in a New Fossil Project!

The fossil collections at the Booth Museum are currently getting some attention they deserve! Two scientists from the British Geological Survey (BGS) are spending a week with us photographing some of our most important specimens.

Dr Michaela Contessi and Simon Harris

International science codes require that every species or subspecies of organism, whether living or fossil, should have a type or reference specimen to define its characteristic features. These specimens are held in museums and collections around the world and must be available for study. The Booth’s collection of fossil type specimens are available to scientists all over the world through a catalogue.

Many of the UK fossil species were defined over a century ago, and with time, the type specimens may have deteriorated or been lost, causing major problems.

The GB/3D type fossils online project, funded through the BGS by JISC (the Joint Information Science Committee), aims to develop a single database of the type specimens held in British collections, of fossil species and subspecies found in the UK, including links to photographs and a selection of 3D digital models.

The BGS is partnered by:

• National Museum Cardiff
• Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences
• Oxford University Museum of Natural History
• Geological Curators’ Group

Together they will develop a collaborative database of British type specimens.

The results will be made available through a single searchable web database. It will include links to view or download high quality images, stereo pairs (anaglyphs) and digital models.

This week Dr Michaela Contessi and Simon Harris are working on the fossils held at the Booth Museum, and they are writing a blog of their work which can be seen here

John Cooper, Keeper of Natural Sciences